


One Small Step for Bucky Barnes

by hufflepirate



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Apollo 11, Cap's list, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky was supposed to kill the Apollo 11 astronauts before they left earth.  He didn't manage it.  Now he and Steve are watching the Moon Landing, which Steve has never seen before.  Feelings abound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Small Step for Bucky Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> To be totally honest, this was largely inspired by the fact that I cannot watch the moon landing without crying like a little girl and I wanted to share my moon landing feels with Steve...
> 
> It was originally supposed to be just a little headcanony thing, but then I decided to post it as a fic instead.
> 
> I'm not sure I like how playing with the tenses came out but... too late now...

The Winter Soldier was supposed to assassinate the crew of Apollo 11 before they could take flight.  He failed.  Completely.  He arrived so late that they were already gone, and his handlers were  _not happy about it._   He was punished for it, and the memories were allowed to remain, because they wanted him to remember the punishment, if nothing else.  They wanted him to remember the fear he'd felt when he knew he'd failed and all the ways that fear was realized once he returned to them.  Those were bad memories.  He did not like them.  They hurt.  He did not like to think about Apollo 11.  He did not like to think about the Moon Landing.

Bucky Barnes is sitting next to Steve Rogers when he watches Neil Armstrong step onto the moon for the very first time.  He can't look at the screen (he hasn't been able to look at the screen for any of this documentary about NASA, because his few fragmented memories are too painful), but he can watch Steve, and so he does.  Captain America is transfixed by the grainy black-and-white images, which flicker into color as they show shots of the control room and of people clustered around TV sets around the world, but then go back to black and white and the moon.  At "the Eagle has wings," he starts swallowing more often, like there's a lump in his throat he can't shake.  At "the Eagle has landed," his eyes well up.  As Neil Armstrong steps down onto the ladder, the tears start rolling slowly down Steve's face, and by "one small step for man," Steve Rogers is crying,  _really_ crying, his back shaking and his eyes gleaming through his tears as he continues to watch the man on the tv screen stand on the moon and talk of taking "one giant leap for mankind." Bucky wraps a tentative arm around Steve's shoulders (it's the human arm, and Bucky hopes that makes it more comforting).  He isn't sure if he feels like a failure or not.  But as Steve turns toward him with a blinding smile and says "It's so beautiful, Buck," he finds his face smiling back, half-heartedly.  It hurts.  The Moon Landing hurts.  But it doesn't hurt Steve.  Steve thinks it's beautiful.  And watching Steve think it's beautiful doesn't hurt at all.  Bucky decides that maybe it was alright not to kill the astronauts.  Maybe it was good.  Maybe it was even worth everything that came afterward, if Steve likes it so much.

Afterward, when he asks Steve why it affected him so much, Steve will talk about black-and-white film and newsreels and the way watching 1969 feels more like watching his own world than it does this modern high-tech place they live now, where it seems obvious that they would be able to put a man on the moon.  He will talk about America and about dreaming and about how everything he knows about computers has been learned since he got here, and it tells him the computers in the videos are ancient, useless things that could not possibly have been ready for a thing like landing on the moon. He will talk about how crazy it seems, and how impossible, and how miraculous that those people made it to the moon.   _Those_ people, the normal human ones, the ones without any serum or metal limbs or high-tech anything, the ones who sit at their computers in their spectacles looking more like him before the serum than after, and the ones stepping out of the capsule in suits that look bulky and snaggable, rippable and tearable and so much less protective than Tony's Iron Man suits.  Steve will talk about the infallible American spirit he fears so often is gone, and about feeling reassured that it wasn't always gone, that it's still there somewhere, if they can only find it again.  And Bucky will decide that Steve is right, that the Moon Landing matters and that he cannot ignore it.  He will decide his memories of Apollo 11 will be memories of this moment, of Steve Rogers crying on the couch, and not of all that other stuff.  It will be easier to say than to do, but Bucky will decide it anyway.  And he will begin to heal, if only a little.  He has a long way to go, but he will make a start.  It will be one small step for Bucky Barnes, and the Winter Soldier will have to take one step back.


End file.
